


The Healing Time

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, M/M, Mark of Cain, PWP, Season/Series 10, maybe a smidgen of plot...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 08:56:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3644331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Dean gave a dry bark of laughter. ‘So what, Sammy, are we talking like…the healing water at Lourdes, here?’</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sam makes a discovery in the Bunker that may give Dean a little relief from the Mark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Healing Time

‘Dean, come ‘ere for a minute!’

Dean leaned back from the dusty tome he’d been hunched over for the last three hours and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to bring the room around him into focus after staring for so long at the scrawled handwriting of a priest dead for more than four hundred years, and welcoming a deep breath that didn’t include the ghosts of mold and must.

He pushed back slowly, not in too much of a hurry as nothing in Sam’s voice had pinged any alarms in his head. He honestly hadn’t noticed when the kid had gotten up or how long he’d been gone, and he tried to clamp down on the childish surge of petulant anger that Sam had abandoned him in his research while he went off to do—whatever it was he was doing.

Even if Sam was taking a damn bubble bath in the middle of the day, though, and just wanted Dean to come wash his back for him, it wouldn’t be anything Dean hadn’t told him to do a dozen times. He’d told him to lay off the research because there wasn’t anything _to_ research. No where they looked revealed any more information on the Mark than what they already knew. Even so, Dean didn’t believe for a second Sam would actually do what he said.

‘Dean! Come ‘ere.’

Sam’s voice was more urgent now, oddly in an excited kind of way, giving Dean to wonder what he possibly could have discovered in the depths of the Bunker that they didn’t already know about.

‘I’m comin’,’ he grumbled and headed out the rear of the Library to follow the meandering halls back past their bedrooms and the “think tank” where the Bunker’s computer brains were stored. ‘Sammy?’

‘Yeah! Dean. Back here!’

Back here was down a fairly narrow hallway that led back into the bedrock surrounding the Bunker, and that Dean thought they had already explored and catalogued as store rooms of a rather ordinary nature.

‘Sam, what the hell are you doin’ back here?’ Dean called as he followed the hallway to the end where a door was standing ajar.

‘Dean!’ Sam leaped through the door just as Dean was about to put his hand out to push it open.

‘The hell, Sam!’ Dean startled and jerked back.

‘Wait. Just wait,’ Sam said, eyes wide and glittering like Dean hadn’t seen them do in longer than he liked to remember. Sam reached up and covered Dean’s eyes with one hand and took hold of his shoulder with the other. ‘You ‘re gonna love this.’

‘Sammy, what the—?’ Dean said in a long suffering tone. Sam pushed him through the door, walked him a few steps and then pulled his hand away. ‘Sam, unless you found a perpetual pie making machine….’

Dean drifted off as he looked around the room. It was pretty nondescript. There was tile on the floor, but the walls looked rough hewn from the rock the Bunker was built back into. There were no furnishings or fixtures save some large copper-looking pipes that ran along the back wall and were half buried below the level of the tile, exiting the rock on one side and disappearing back into it on the opposite wall. The room itself wasn’t huge, but the ceiling was high and seemed to go up above ground level.

Sam caught Dean’s upward glance. 

‘Skylight’ he said. ‘I think this room is under the Watchtower and they built mirrors,’ he paused to fiddle with a set of rudimentary controls by the door with an awed grin on his face, ‘on louvers to filter the outside light down here.’

‘Why?’ Dean frowned. ‘What’s this room for?’ I thought we’d mapped everything on this side.’ 

‘I thought so, too,’ Sam agreed. ‘But we must’ve missed it. The door’s not even numbered. That’s what caught my attention. I think it’s actually part of the geothermal heating system, but come look….’

Sam beckoned Dean forward to a place where the tile fell away into a pool of swirling water that was maybe the size of a couple of child’s wading pools.

‘The bunker was obviously built above a hot spring but this part of it,’ Sam squatted to drag his fingers through the water, ‘must’ve been above ground.’

‘Okay, Sam, this is neat and all, but is there a point to this excursion?’

Sam waggled his eyebrows in true Dean-esque fashion making his brother roll his eyes. ‘Wanna go for a swim?’

‘What? In there?’

‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘The water’s warm.’

‘It’s part of the _heating_ system, Sam.’ Dean crossed his arms. ‘We don’t even know if it’s clean.’

‘It’s being fed from underground, Dean.’ It was Sam’s turn to roll his eyes. ‘Come on. You need a break from research.’

‘Sam, I am not going swimming.’

‘Good, ‘cause there’s not actually enough room.’ Sam was already tugging his t-shirt off over his head and toeing at his boots. ‘Just come in and soak for a few minutes. Relax a little.’

Dean almost laughed. This edict coming from the little brother who had barely slept more than four hours put together any day in the last three months because he was spending all his time looking for a cure for the damn Mark.

‘What’s so funny?’ Sam asked.

Dean just shook his head, arms still crossed,, watching his brother twitch off first one sock and then the other and go for the snap on his jeans. ‘You. You sure have changed your tune all of a sudden.’

Sam very deliberately avoided Dean’s eyes and shrugged minutely. ‘Like you said, we’ve looked everywhere…twice. Sometimes we just have to…accept it. Now, shuck ‘em and get in here. Or are you enjoying the striptease?’

Dean snorted but didn’t move. He wouldn’t lie—to Sam or himself—watching his brother get naked, even in this efficient, utilitarian fashion made Dean’s dick twitch. It had been a while. A long while.

Not all of Dean’s “clean living” plan to combat the Mark’s effects had remained structurally intact. The egg-white omelets had gone right out the window. Literally. And drinking…well, he didn’t do near as much of it, but there was still a bottle of Jack in the desk drawer in his room.

But the sex? That he had steered clear of. The Mark was primal, come down from the age of man when he still thought, felt, and reacted more like an animal than a civilized human being; and actions that lit up those more primitive parts of the brain, like killing or sex, were just inviting danger in the front door.

There was also the fact that Sam was bald-face lying to him.

Dean tightened his arms and stared his brother down. ‘Sammy, what’s going’ on?’

Sam dodged his gaze again, fingers fumbling with his zipper but not drawing it down. ‘I told you—.’

‘If you think for one second, I’m gonna believe you just “found” this room…. Sam, you can find your way twenty-miles cross country after going for a ride gagged and blindfolded just by the feel of the road and the turns the car made. Now, you _knew_ this place was down here. Why the sudden interest?’ 

Dean leveled his best I’m-the-big-brother-don’t-fuck-with-me glare on Sam and waited.

Sam’s shoulders sagged. ‘I ran across something in William Harren’s journal.’

‘And?’

Sam squirmed under Dean’s intent gaze and bitch-face no.19, albeit a little rusty and teetering toward no.43, crept out to play, narrowing Sam’s eyes at the corners and drawing at his upper lip the tiniest bit before tired resignation came and wiped it all away.

He sighed. ‘He mentioned an old injury that gave him a lot of pain until…he started coming down here and soaking in the hot springs.’

Dean gave a dry bark of laughter. ‘So what, Sammy, are we talking like…the healing water at Lourdes, here?’

Sam’s eyes shot wide for a second at his brother’s reference. ‘How do you—?’

‘Sam….’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ Sam conceded. ‘He didn’t say it cured him, but regular treatment seemed to help, and—.’

‘Sam.’ Dean’s voice dropped soft like it always used to before he had to break a hard truth to his brother. ‘We aren’t talking about a bum knee here, or a bump, or a bruise. We’re talking about the Mark. Some enchanted water isn’t going to cure it.’

‘It’s not _enchanted_ ,’ Sam sighed in frustration, hair falling forward into his face. ‘And I don’t expect it to cure you, I just thought maybe it would help a little.’

‘Help what?’

Sam looked up from under his hair, bottom lip quivering just a little, hands reaching up to cross and hook over the dip between his neck and shoulder on either side while his thumbs rubbed nervously at his clavicle bones; giving the combined effect of a teenage Sam still wildly uncomfortable with the gangly body that he didn’t quite fit into yet and trying to shrink inside himself under his brother’s avidly intent gaze.

‘Help _you_ , Dean,’ Sam finally murmured.

Dean’s arms loosened. So many of their exchanges lately had been tinged with frustration, annoyance, desperation, and rang false in both their ears when they attempted to try for “normal” if such a thing could even be said to exist for them; but Sam’s whispered plea was honest, dredged up from his heart and unfettered by any false hope. He only wanted to bring his brother a moment of respite in the turbulence of dark needs and desires that were waging war with all of Dean’s natural sensibilities right now; to lay down a flag of truce and ceasefire and give Dean a chance to fortify himself for the next battle; to re-center and balance the scales.

Sam dropped his arms, shoulders coming up again, shedding the uncertain teenager and leaving behind the cocky twenty-something who had believed there was an end to all this and somehow it was happy; that this was a war that could be won with a few victorious battles instead of decades of attrition that would probably long outlast their lifespans. The man who stood before Dean now was just that—a man. For once, the weight of the world didn’t rest on his shoulders. He wasn’t trying to be some avenging angel in his brother’s name, self-righteous as his shield and lance. He was none of that in this moment.

He was just Sam. Just Dean’s pain in the ass little brother who could just as easily have been standing there offering him a cold brew to take the taste of soot and ash out of his mouth from the latest salt and burn as coaxing him into some miracle bath of mineral water.

Sam came forward, jeans slipping a little at his narrow hips because the snap was still undone, and gently pushed Dean’s arms the rest of the way down to his sides and proceeded to slide his hands beneath the thin flannel of his plaid shirt and push it off his shoulders. He moved to the t-shirt next, tugging gently but persistently until Dean lifted his arms and let Sam pull it off over his head.

‘Boots,’ Sam commanded quietly, and Dean bent to jerk at the laces of his boots and toe them off and then peel off his socks until he stood beside Sam barefoot in just his jeans and a reluctant smile.

Sam took his hand and pulled him to the edge of the pool. It was deeper than Dean had expected and the bottom was lost in shadows, but their predecessors had had the forethought to carve out a rough ledge around the pool where a body could sit comfortably submerged and still rest their head back against the edge.

Sam’s long fingers brushed against Dean’s bare belly, shifting the soft hair there, making his muscles clench and his dick twitch again in reminder that it had been a long time since Sam’s broad, beautiful hands had touched him there and longer still since they’d done so with any kind of intent. Sam paused to appreciate the defining ripple of muscle, lips parting just a little on the outlet of a tiny huff of breath. His eyes darted up to Dean’s.

‘I thought you didn’t…?’

Dean gave a single shake of his head to the negative. ‘Self-control, Sammy. Just trying to exercise some self-control, to prove I still can.’ His eyes softened. ‘Doesn’t mean I don’t want to.’

Sam gave a slow nod and finished unsnapping and unzipping his brother’s jeans, sliding them smoothly, along with his briefs, down his slim hips, lean muscled thighs, and slightly bowed calves with purposeful moves meant to soothe and not arouse.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter because just Sam’s closeness had Dean half hard, and Sam blushed sweetly like he hadn’t done in so long and reminded Dean again of the fresh-faced teen eagerly waiting to wrap his lips around his brother’s dick for the first time; and Sam’s eyes went a shade lighter, brightening the blue and green in the muddied hazel, like they always did when he was turned on. 

Sam’s pretty eyes had always been such a give away, telegraphing his state of arousal as plain as words on a page to his brother which had often led to stolen moments in public restrooms or around the backside of gas stations in BFE, quick tumbles in the backseat of the Impala, and a couple of memorable hand-jobs discreetly given under diner tables in secluded corner booths the times that Sam’s eyes had fucking _glowed_ with need.

Sam divested himself of his own jeans and boxers, and Dean was pleased to see he hadn’t lost his touch as his eyes roamed his little brother’s lean form and paused a couple of significant seconds on the full erection bobbing in front of him. 

Sam took a deep, slow breath and grasped Dean’s hand again, stepping backward into the water. Dean sat down on the edge first, dropping his feet in and then, satisfied that the temperature really was comfortable, slid the rest of the way in, finding footing near Sam that kept him at a level where the water lapped quietly at his chest.

‘It feels…soft,’ Dean said, unable to find an adequate descriptor for the way the water slid against his skin like it was a whole living thing, clinging and caressing every warm inch of him. It held him and buoyed him, making him feel weightless while at the same time pressing in against him and urging him to lie back in its warm embrace. Which was a silly thing to think, so Dean opted instead for turning and leaning back into Sam’s chest.

Sam let out a soft whuff of surprise and backed up half a step before his arms closed around Dean, one at his chest and the other at his shoulders, and took his weight full against him as Dean kicked his legs out and allowed himself to float tethered securely against his brother.

‘There’s, uh, large salt deposits around here,’ Sam explained, voice cracking at the edges with emotions he’d been forcing himself to suppress for months. ‘The spring water probably runs through them, acts like a natural water softener. Maybe contributes to the therapeutic qualities, too, salt being purifying and all.’

‘You’re ruining the magic, Sam,’ Dean said with the hint of a teasing smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

Sam shook his head and dared to bury his nose in Dean’s hair above his ear, a sigh stuttering out of him as it tripped over a sob on its way.

‘Don’t be a girl, Sammy,’ Dean whispered, but there was no conviction in it.

‘’M not,’ Sam mumbled and buried his nose closer, tightening his arms just a little. Dean lifted a hand to the one wrapped across his chest and stroked it reassuringly.

‘It feels good, Sam.’

Sam wasn’t sure exactly what Dean was referring to: maybe the abating demands of the Mark, or this closeness that they hadn’t indulged in since Dean was cured of his demonic soul. So he went with the safer bet and shifted his grip so he could grasp Dean’s wrist and turn his forearm to see the welted brand in the crook of his elbow.

Dean let him, lifting it to the surface of the water where they could both see it, looking a light, faded pink like an old burn scar and not the hot ugly shifting reddish orange that made Sam’s stomach turn just thinking about it.

Dean flexed his fingers, watching the muscles ripple and bunch under the skin. 

‘It’s quiet,’ he said finally. ‘Not content, but…muffled, at least.’

Sam sighed, it might have been in disappointment, but he tried to hide that. ‘It probably won’t last.’

‘No.’ Dean turned his head so that Sam’s lips dragged across his cheek and landed at the corner of his mouth. ‘It probably won’t, but it’s nice to have a little reprieve.” He smiled a little. ‘Thank you, Sammy.’

Sam nodded, grazing his lips against Dean’s, so softly, trembling with pent up wanting. Dean answered by nosing gently at Sam’s cheek, urging his head around until their lips could meet full-on, pressing warm and a little tentative at first. Dean shifted in Sam’s grip, pushing himself upright in the water and stretching out along Sam’s body. Aided by the bouncy and slippery softness of the water, Dean slotted Sam’s thick erection between his thighs and pushed back, letting it slide under his balls and up under his own dick which was now at full attention.

Sam choked on a groan and let go of Dean’s mouth to suck in a ragged breath. ‘Dean…y-you said—.’

‘I said I wanted to.’ Dean nipped at Sam’s lower lip and rocked his hips, sliding their cocks together in a sweet, soft glide of heated skin. ‘I want this, Sam.’

Sam moaned and tried to open his arms, to let go and turn himself against the wall of the pool, but Dean held him fast. 

‘No, Sam. I want you in me. This is how I keep control,’ he said, tipping his head back to suck warm drops of water from the tender skin under Sam’s ear. ‘By giving it over to you.’

‘Okay,’ Sam breathed unevenly. ‘Okay, Dean.’

Sam could count on one hand the number of times he had topped Dean. It wasn’t intentional. It had just always happened that way. Maybe because Sam had been so young when they began  this unusual romance; because he had deferred to his older brother’s greater experience and strength then and still did after all these years. Maybe because they could keep control of so little in their lives and it was the least Sam could offer his brother to let Dean fill him and be fulfilled himself in knowing he could bring his little brother such intense pleasure.

Whatever it was, Sam had never been dissatisfied with it, but for Dean to ask him to take control, to be the one to fill his brother up and drive them both over the edge, made Sam’s blood run hot, and he dipped his head to sink his teeth into Dean’s shoulder, drawing out a gasp and moan of pleasure. He readjusted his hold, flattening his broad palm against Dean’s stomach and spreading his fingers wide to pin him to Sam’s chest while he slipped his other hand between their bodies and down, rubbing his knuckles firmly against wither side of Dean’s spine, feeling each vertebrae down to his tailbone. He cupped Dean’s ass, long fingers curling in to knead at the thick, meaty muscle underneath the taut skin, then pushing up between his cheeks to brush over the tightly furled ring of muscle hidden there.

Dean groaned and pushed back against Sam’s stroking fingers. Warm water gushed against his hole as Sam teased it with a fingertip and somehow made it easier to relax and let Sam inside him. He may not do this often, but Sam was by no means shy or inexperienced and had one finger buried to the last knuckle and was expertly stroking Dean’s prostate in no time.

‘Guh…Sammy, I can’t—.’ Dean threaded his fingers in Sam’s hand on his stomach and pushed it downward to curl around his thick and throbbing cock.

‘Me neither, Dean,’ Sam gasped, fitting another finger up inside his brother and stroking hard. ‘Me neither.’

Sam rolled his hips and Dean felt the velvet slide of his brother’s thick flesh again and his already overfull cock jerked and blurted shimmery tendrils of cum into the warm water. Sam felt it, swiped his thumb across the still slippery slit and then cupped his palm around his brother’s swollen cocked and rubbed in little circles.

‘Fuck, Sammy.’ 

Dean’s back bowed and his hips curled forward, pushing himself into Sam’s massaging palm.

‘Still like that?’ Sam asked close to Dean’s ear as if he really needed an answer other than the slick mess of pre-cum in his hand and the high frequency trembling in his brother’s muscles that translated into a rhythmic clenching around Sam’s buried fingers.

‘Sam, please,’ Dean’s sex roughened voice broke on the plea, but Sam didn’t need it. He knew what Dean wanted, what he needed.

He pulled his fingers back and Dean let out a low whine that sank to a growl before Sam got himself lined up and was pushing the velvety hard head of his cock against Dean’s still tight rim.

Dean widened his stance, steadied himself, and gave Sam opposing pressure to push against. He hissed low and long as Sam filled him, stretching him until it burned, until passion started to dim in the face of pain. Sam sensed it in the frozen tension of Dean’s back muscles pressed flush to his belly. He stopped, stayed, buried his face against his brother’s neck and licked and lapped softly, mouthing kisses against his damp skin while Dean’s body relaxed and opened to him.

‘Too much?’ Sam panted.

Dean jerked his head in a quick negative, drew in a sharp breath and forced his muscles lax.

‘More,’ he rasped.

Sam groaned and set his teeth into the juncture of Dean’s neck and shoulder. His orgasm was knotting deep in his belly, tighter and tighter, drawing his balls up close between his thighs in anticipation of that final release. He pushed another inch, shuddering when Dean gasped, whined, and then clenched around him.

‘Jesus, Dean.’

‘More, Sammy,’ Dean demanded harshly. ‘All of it. Now.’

Sam sucked in a breath, dropped his hand to Dean’s hip to hold him and then slammed home with an aborted cry, sheathing himself to the hilt, balls deep in his brother’s ass.

Dean’s hand slid into Sam’s hair and twisted, dragging his mouth and teeth back down to Dean’s neck. He arched back, pushing himself that fraction of an inch further down Sam’s enormous cock. It had been a long time since he’d taken Sam so deep, been so completely filled that he felt like the tiniest movement now would split him wide open. It felt amazing. It felt like…home.

The Mark still whispered and murmured in the background, but a warm swell of pressure in the center of Dean’s chest started to hum brightly and drown it out. The pressure built, pushing outward, expanding his chest, escaping him on a sudden sob and shooting out through his veins to the rest of his body. His fingers clenched harder in Sam’s hair and he turned his face to bury it against the long, beautiful line of Sam’s throat.

‘Jesus, Sammy…’ he whispered brokenly.

‘Dean…?’

Sam held perfectly still, buried deep and throbbing, Dean’s cock still swollen hard and so thick it was almost too much even for Sam’s generous grip; but his brother’s whole body was tense, like every muscle and tendon was a string pulled tight over some instrument and vibrating with a sound he could not hear.

‘Sam…’ Dean whispered against Sam’s throat, pushing closer to kiss the soft skin under his jaw. Sam felt wet heat trapped between Dean’s lips and his own skin and knew it was more than just humidity from the hot spring. It was tears.

‘Dean….’

A moment ago this had been about passion under pressure, about fucking his brother until they both went blind with the force of a long overdue release; but now it was suddenly about something else. Something deeper. Something neither of them touched very often because Dean didn’t do “chick flick” moments, and Sam tended to fall apart in girly pieces under that kind of emotional intensity.

All he felt now, though, was an amazing calm.

He wrapped his arm around Dean’s stomach, holding tight and angled it so he could splay his hand over his brother’s heart, feel the steady thrum of it, know that right this second they were both feeling the same thing. The other hand stroked Dean’s hard cock slow and strong while he rolled his hips, not thrusting but shifting pressure, sliding even deeper because this wasn’t about fucking anymore, this was about delving deep for the cornerstone of each other’s existence. This was about love.

Not that it wasn’t always, but they tended to dress it in casualness and only offer it a token’s worth of acknowledgement, evading its long pleading looks to get naked for them and take them both inside itself and hold them, warm them, remind the that they existed for each other and no power on earth, or in Heaven or Hell either, could tear them apart.

Sam felt it now, that brilliant light enveloping him from the inside, heating his blood until his whole body tingled with an exquisite pleasure that bordered on sweet agony. He gasped and rocked his hips forward, rolling his palm over Dean’s slick, hard cockhead, and then moaned as more silvery tendrils of pre-cum threaded out into the water.

‘Sammy, I’m gonna—God! I can’t—.’ Dean gasped, panted, feeling his orgasm vibrating in the base of his spine like a crystal about to shatter from some high frequency sound. He knew without a doubt that he would shatter, too, just like that crystal with Sam buried deep inside him, flooding him body and soul when the dam on this intense pressure growing inside them both broke and gave way.

Dean groaned again as Sam rolled against him. He could feel every hot hard inch of his little brother up inside him, filling him so full, stretching him until he thought he couldn’t take anymore and then Sam would swell bigger, slide just a little deeper, and Dean would swear he was going to burst open on his brother’s cock like a balloon blown beyond its capacity to hold air.

He clenched around Sam, earning a tiny cry and teeth scraping against his shoulder and the pain/pleasure of Sam swelling bigger and stroking him harder, palming his huge swollen head and rubbing until Dean couldn’t keep a grip on the tumult building in his belly and chest, and he gave up with a fierce cry, muscles locking up, every tendon and sinew straining as he filled up Sam’s hand with hot slippery cum, and Sam in turn locked his arm around Dean and held him in a crushing grip as he spilled himself inside his brother. Dean felt every hot, thick spurt inside him and moaned as it filled him and overflowed him and gushed out of him around Sam’s still hard cock.

Sam stumbled back a step, dragging Dean with him until his shoulder blades connected hard with the edge of the pool.

‘Dean, I-I don’t—.’ Sam gasped helplessly. ‘What _was_ that?’

Dean just hung from Sam’s trembling grip around his middle, hand still lodged in Sam’s hair but fingers lax now, just scratching gently, arrhythmically, at his scalp. His whole being felt emptied out and full to bursting in the same moment. Emptied of all the bad things: the stress, doubt, worry, the lingering lust for blood and death. While he felt the warm glow of love for his brother infusing every cell and synapse of his body, burning away his awareness of anything else in that moment.

He tipped his head back on Sam’s shoulder, brought Sam’s head down until he could kiss him long and slow and deep, a brushing of lips, a stroking of tongues, just tasting, savoring the here and now. He drew back at some point, just a fraction to whisper against Sam’s mouth, 

‘I love you, Sammy. Love you so much.’

Sam didn’t speak—couldn’t—only dropped his mouth back to Dean’s and drove deep, crushing their lips together, and Dean could taste his brother’s response in the salty tears that slipped down his cheeks into the their kiss.

_I love you, too, Dean._

——

Sometime later they both crawled out of the pool and dressed and went to the kitchen. Sam fixed grilled cheese sandwiches while Dean heated tomato and rice soup, and for the first time in months—maybe longer—they curled up on the couch together, this time with Sam holding Dean securely back to his chest, fingers sifting through the short softness of his brother’s hair, and then watched a movie on Sam’s laptop until they both drifted off to sleep.

Late that night, Dean woke to a tingling in his right arm, but it was only from the weight of Sam’s shoulder blade cutting off the blood flow against the couch back as Dean had turned in his sleep and reached around Sam to hold him tight. For a tense moment, he lay in the dark listening for the dark murmur, the tugging lure of the Mark’s voice. But all he heard was the soft whuff of Sam’s steady breathing and the strong beat of his heart in his ear where it rested against Sam’s chest. Dean sighed, pressed a light kiss up under Sam’s jaw and settled deeper into his brother’s embrace and slipped back into sleep.


End file.
